{"id":576514,"date":"2025-11-17T16:42:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T16:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/576514\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T16:42:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T16:42:17","slug":"emma-raducanu-handed-reunion-with-star-she-already-humiliated-in-united-cup-draw-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/576514\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu handed reunion with star she already humiliated in United Cup draw | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Raducanu<\/a> will go up against a familiar opponent at the United Cup after the draw was made in the early hours of Monday morning. The one-time US Open<\/a> champion will represent Great Britain in the team-based event, with Mimi Xu and Olivia Nicholls joining her in the women’s squad. On the men’s side, Jack Draper<\/a> will team up with Lloyd Glasspool and Billy Harris.<\/p>\n

The tournament, which takes place in January, starts with a round-robin group stage with the top two teams qualifying for the knock-out rounds. Ties are played as best-of-three matches including one men\u2019s singles, one women\u2019s singles and one mixed doubles rubber. Great Britain reached the quarter-finals earlier this year, crashing out at the hands of Poland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They will be hoping to improve on that display in January and have learned who they will face in the round-robin group stage. They have been grouped with Greece and Japan, meaning Raducanu will meet two familiar faces in the opening matches.<\/p>\n

She will go up against Maria Sakkari, with the Greek player having already been humiliated by Raducanu in the past. She beat her in the semi-finals of the US Open four years ago en route to a historic Grand Slam triumph.<\/p>\n

They met again at Wimbledon<\/a> last year, when Sakkari was ranked inside the top 10. She came out with some fighting talk before the match, insisting that she had a good chance of victory despite Raducanu having the backing of the British crowd.<\/p>\n

“I think the opportunity is for both,” said Sakkari. “She’s also playing a top 10 player. Let’s not forget that.”<\/p>\n

Sakkari\u2019s comments ultimately came back to haunt her, with Raducanu claiming an impressive victory in straight sets to reach the second week at SW19.<\/p>\n

She also beat the Greek ace when they met in Dubai earlier this year<\/a>, sealing a comfortable win to end her four-match losing streak.<\/p>\n

Raducanu has won all four of her matches against Sakkari and will be looking to extend that run when they do battle at the United Cup.<\/p>\n

The young Brit will also face Naomi Osaka in the women’s singles match when Great Britain go up against Japan. They have only met once before, with Raducanu coming out on top at the Citi Open earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She cruised to a 6-4 6-2 victory to advance to the quarter-finals, a result which also saw her leapfrog Katie Boulter<\/a> to become Britain’s top-ranked female player once again.<\/p>\n

Speaking afterwards, Raducanu said: “I thought it was going to be a really difficult match. Naomi has won four Slams, been world No 1, she’s so dangerous and on the hard courts I think she’s particularly comfortable.<\/p>\n

“I knew I’d have to play really well and manage my service games which I’m really proud of how I did. I’m really pleased with how I handled the ball speed and the conditions.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Draper will face Stefanos Tsitsipas<\/a> and Shintaro Mochizuki. Other exciting ties include Jasmine Paolini vs Lois Boisson and Alex de Minaur against Jakub Mensik and Casper Ruud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Raducanu will go up against a familiar opponent at the United Cup after the draw was made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[1070,4884,18209,37655,79,9722,1068,31635,38963,5838,31637,16,182748,182750,182749,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-576514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-emma-raducanu","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-maria-sakkari","11":"tag-naomi-osaka","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-team-gb","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-tennis-section","16":"tag-tennis-highlights","17":"tag-tennis-news","18":"tag-tennis-today","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-cup","21":"tag-united-cup-2026","22":"tag-united-cup-draw","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115566041303564077","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}